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Talk:Sesame Street Monsters by Color
Old school I feel like this list is kind of dumb. We did stuff like this a year ago, but it doesn't feel like it fits where the wiki's at anymore. What do other people think? -- Danny (talk) 16:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC) :It could be helpful if someone's looking for a monster by color when they don't know the name. It's certainly not hurting anything. — Scott (talk) 16:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC) ::But I don't think somebody looking for a monster would know to come to this page. I found it by hitting "Random page", and it just feels lame to me. -- Danny (talk) 17:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC) :::Yeah, but I feel the same way about Miss Piggy without gloves, and I know several people felt like that about Characters Whose Names Sound a Bit Rude. I agree with you on this one, but it's hard to come down on one while allowing the other, kind of the problem we had with themes, especially when often the defense for things like the Rude list, outside of it being more amusing than this, is just that it "doesn't hurt anything." It's kind of dull, but not as clearly pointless as those lists tracking appearances by Bert on video covers. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 19:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC) ::::As a list, lost in the wiki that you only happen to come across by accident, yeah it's dumb. But we could be a little more helpful in that respect. For example, linking to it from Category:Sesame Street Monsters. I'm not in love with the list -- it could probably use some work -- but I don't think we need to toss it. It certainly serves more of a purpose to the casual non-fan than tracking which video covers featured Bert. — Scott (talk) 20:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC) :::::I actually think it's probably more useful if less amusing than the rude names list. We have galleries of AM's by color, why not the monsters? We could easily enough convert this to a gallery and have it linked from somewhere people might look. I am dead certain there are people out ther who want to know about eg. "that purple monster".... -- Wendy (talk) 20:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC) ::::::I don't think that's the same thing at all, though, and I'm very much against making this a gallery. Or at least, I don't see that as improving it. We don't track the Anything Muppets by color, but by pattern, to highlight the many variations available through simple interchangeability of features, and because we link the patterns from the various pages. In most cases, the pattern name just happens to coincide with color. And with those, they're the same color, and we have sources to verify the shading. Here, many of the colors are wild, very subjective guesses in an approximate range, and a gallery would only highlight the oddity even more. Take a look at purple. We have Telly Monster (a sort of red purple), Two-Headed Monster (lavender), Ingrid (who strikes me as just a different shade of blue if anything), and Lulu (who in one version is definitely blue, in the other a more traditional light purple). I'm not in favor of deleting it, but I also think it could definitely be improved. Instead of being a random list, it could benefit if some of the shades could be specified (some may be mentioned in the CTW character guides). A bigger improvement would be to add some text, so it's not just an almost random list. While the info is scattered, I know somewhere there's discussions and details on why specific colors were chosen for the monsters, or how they tested it (G is for Growing references such a study on Zoe, but goes into greater detail on color selections for the international characters). -- Andrew 21:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC) :::::::I think a gallery of Muppet or Sesame Monsters would be great -- let's put the pictures together, and organize it alphabetically. That's a useful and interesting page. Then if somebody's looking for a particular monster, they can scan through the gallery and find it. Tracking AM's by color is useful, because it's actually tracking the AM pattern, rather than the color. The Fat Blue characters have something in common; the orange monsters listed here don't. :::::::My personal feeling is that maybe we should start weeding out some of the dull lists. I agree that video covers featuring Bert is incredibly stupid, and if it were to get created now, we would've deleted it immediately. Some of these lists are fossils of what we were like a year ago. I think it would be worthwhile to go through some of these and take out the boring ones. -- Danny (talk) 21:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC) ::::::::I'm all for removing lists that aren't helpful, but I think calling out the ones that are "boring" is the wrong way to put it. The page is helpful and informative to casual non-fans who are looking for a blue monster who wasn't Grover or Cookie Monster. If such a helpful page is boring, then it definitely needs some spicing up. I agree with the recommendations above about adding more text (Although I don't have a copy of G is for Growing anymore), and certainly pictures would be a bonus. A gallery would really help someone find what they're looking for. — Scott (talk) 21:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC) :::::::::I'm still bothered by the randomness of the color designations, often contradicted by the text; galleries would point them out, and I guess make it more obvious and thus less misleading, but wouldn't solve the problem in my opinion. As I said, Purple is just a huge mess to me. McDougal Monster is listed under brown, but the article calls him "tan." One of the MNN Logo Monsters is brown here and orange on his page (and to my eyes). That alone makes this a lot less useful ("Blue" is the best section, on that score, but also, alphebabetization is needed). Just from glancing at the actual character images we have, some of the monsters classed as yellow, brown, or orange look almost identical, and in other cases the fur is so dark or obscured in the image as to make color determination impossible, and then there's Lulu and some other minor characters, who actually changed colors over time. As shown at discussions like this one, a characters color can be subjective, and easily disputed, if it's just based on someone's assumption. Scott, do any of your CTW guides group the monsters by color? -- Andrew Leal (talk) 22:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC) ::::::::::So it seems to me that we have Sesame Street monsters, which is handily self-updating and has a lot more monsters than this list. If we added a Sesame Street Monster Gallery page in that category, it would be a start on helping people browse them. This list would then be redundant as-is and could be deleted for that reason, or because it's wildly incomplete (rather than because it's boring). I think rather than weeding out "boring" lists we might consider weeding out lists that contain information which could be better presented in a different format. And If there is information on the way the colors are picked that could be its own article with appropriate illustrations; it seems unsuited to a list anyhow. -- Wendy (talk) 04:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC) :::::::::::Yeah, I like that a lot better. If the benefit is so people can browse around and find a monster they can't remember the name of, this seems more useful, and doesn't suffer from arbitrary color groupings. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC) ::::::::::::I love that gallery. That's a much more useful page -- and, if I may, more interesting. I do think that "interesting" and "boring" are relevant criteria for the wiki. We use "notable", and I think that's just another word for interesting. ::::::::::::Scott used the example earlier of video covers featuring Bert. Kermit in Sesame Street Merchandise is an interesting page because it proves a particular point (although it could use some introductory text explaining that point). But we don't want a plain list of video covers featuring Bert, because it doesn't mean anything in particular; it's boring. That would also open up the field for a list of video covers featuring Big Bird, and Cookie Monster, and Elmo -- more boring lists. ::::::::::::Now, if somebody wanted to use Bert's appearances on video covers as a way of tracking the character's popularity in Sesame merchandising, then I could see that as a potentially worthwhile article. But the list, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything. ::::::::::::I think judgements about what's interesting and what's boring are important for us; that's what keeps us from descending into OCD madness. Just because something is true doesn't mean it's interesting enough for the wiki. -- Danny (talk) 15:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)